Mitchell v. Wilkerson’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently August 1978 · most notably Alspaugh v. Diggs (1953), G. Crabtree v. E. Dingus & T. Salyers (1953)
23 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Drumwright v. Walker · Davis v. Webb · Wright v. Swain · Lipscomb v. O'Brien
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““But there are these physical facts which warranted a finding that he was proceeding at a much greater speed than he admitted: The sound of ‘tires crying’ just before the crash; the fact that the [vehicle in which the plaintiff was riding] crossed the curb, went up a 3-foot embankment, uprooted and broke off a large tree, and overturned with a noise likened by one of the witnesses to ‘a freight train starting out on a hill.’ Such physical facts warrant the inference of excessive speed despite uncontradicted oral testimony to the contrary. [Citation.]””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““But if we advert to our earlier cases, where the subject is fully discussed, we will see that something more than a mere breach of two or more statutory duties imposed upon a driver is required in order to sustain a finding that he has been guilty of gross negligence.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.